I know some here are not the biggest fans of Deadspin (I happen to enjoy it most of the time) but they've got a relatively new blog called Regressing that tries to take a deeper look at sports analytics. Today's post is interesting and ties well into a debate we have here frequently: Recruiting vs Performance.



This chart shows that Rice is a little better at performing but recruit ranking and on the field results correlate pretty well. Of course, the chart uses Rivals for those recruit rankings and it's been noted here often that those rankings can be a bit of an echo chamber re team rankings. I don't know if that's enough to dismiss this work though. Lots of interesting data points. Boise is well into the "Better on the Field" category (not surprising). UCLA solidly in the "Better at Recruiting" category didn't surprise me considering Rick Neuheisel was their coach from 2008-2011. Kansas is interesting. Weis impact?

(10-03-2014 12:43 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  This chart shows that Rice is a little better at performing but recruit ranking and on the field results correlate pretty well. Of course, the chart uses Rivals for those recruit rankings and it's been noted here often that those rankings can be a bit of an echo chamber re team rankings.

I don't think there's much question that recruiting and performance are correlated.

However I don't think the cause-effect relationship is very clear. The assumption is always that recruiting is the cause and performance is the effect, but I think the opposite is at least as true. If you looked at it over time I wouldn't be surprised if recruiting lagged performance.

Also, if you looked at other metrics like average attendance or coaching budget, I bet those would be at least as correlated with performance as recruiting rankings are.

Still, far too many g-5, much less p-5 schools to our right and above... not nearly enough to our left and below.

I think most of us would be happier being where Nevada or NIU is, or even Navy, despite the fact that by this measure (alone) it would mean we were somehow 'worse' at recruiting.

(10-03-2014 12:58 PM)Gravy Owl Wrote:  

(10-03-2014 12:43 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  This chart shows that Rice is a little better at performing but recruit ranking and on the field results correlate pretty well. Of course, the chart uses Rivals for those recruit rankings and it's been noted here often that those rankings can be a bit of an echo chamber re team rankings.

I don't think there's much question that recruiting and performance are correlated.

Of course, most of the time. Which makes sense. This chart gets interesting when they don't. The farther you get from center, the more interesting the story about the coach/program, I think.

(10-03-2014 01:45 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  Of course, most of the time. Which makes sense. This chart gets interesting when they don't. The farther you get from center, the more interesting the story about the coach/program, I think.

What I disagree with is the assumption that recruiting is the cause and performance is the effect. It's not directly stated in the article but it is clearly implied.

The interesting question to Rice is, how did teams in the upper half get there? In the case of TCU and Boise, I know that their performance improved *before* their recruiting improved (or at least, before those improved recruits actually got on the field). Which suggests that improved performance led to improved recruiting, more than vice-versa.

I think you can accomplish that goal either way, Gravy. If KU had a few good seasons, performance would follow recruiting.

I think as you move up, you also tend to move to the right... and as you move to the right, you also tend to move up.

What I take from this is perhaps that moving to a p5 conference would put us near Duke and Vandy

As would consistently winning CUSA (not once, but consistently) see where most of the teams that USED to be the powers in CUSA are

You either need to recruit better, or get your recruits to play better. It looks like we've gotten our recruits to play somewhat better and perhaps we're recruiting better now as a result... but I think this is a decent graphic representation of the task and how to get there.

Some of my questions would be, how does Navy, Air Force and NIU do what they do? I have a good idea about navy and Air Force... but know little about NIU. Is there anything useful we can learn about how anyone above and/or to our left so dramatically outperformed their recruiting?

THIS is why I want to focus more on recruiting/identifying academically oriented athletes... because I think that we have a better reputation with academic counselors than with coaches and for good reason. I can't expect our coaches to consistently overcome the fact that high school coaches look better getting a player admitted to KU than Rice. Plus, I think the University would be better served as well. I suspect there are some potential NCAA recruiting issues, but I can't imagine that we couldn't at least expose some hypocrisy if we were accused of using our academic reputation to field a smarter football team. While I'd also like to spend more money on coaching (getting them to play better) I think the resources to get even better recruits is already somewhat in place. Add that to what David brings and i think we have a winner

(10-03-2014 02:35 PM)Gravy Owl Wrote:  

(10-03-2014 01:45 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  Of course, most of the time. Which makes sense. This chart gets interesting when they don't. The farther you get from center, the more interesting the story about the coach/program, I think.

What I disagree with is the assumption that recruiting is the cause and performance is the effect. It's not directly stated in the article but it is clearly implied.

I didn't read it as strongly as you did, I guess, but I agree with you that it's incorrect to make the assumption. What would be interesting (although probably harder to illustrate clearly) is the rolling average for these measures, so that a trend line could be plotted. I think that would allow us to discern which condition led the other.

The problem with reading this chart for Rice is that we're so clumped at the bottom left, it kind of doesn't matter. Relative to the FBS universe, we don't do either well at all. As you and Hambone note, the important lessons in this chart for Rice are understanding how other teams moved themselves from where we currently stand.

Recruiting and performance are a spiral, and either factor can start the spiral up or down.

(10-03-2014 03:22 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I think you can accomplish that goal either way, Gravy. If KU had a few good seasons, performance would follow recruiting.

Well, that's a pretty big "if."

Though now that you mention it, I'll predict that if their next coach turns it around, somebody will say that just proves how well Weis recruited. It won't matter whether any of Weis's better-rated recruits are even a part of the turnaround.

Quote:I think as you move up, you also tend to move to the right... and as you move to the right, you also tend to move up.

I do agree with that. With TCU and Boise, I think they started out by moving directly up, then they moved up and to the right.

Quote:Some of my questions would be, how does Navy, Air Force and NIU do what they do? I have a good idea about navy and Air Force... but know little about NIU. Is there anything useful we can learn about how anyone above and/or to our left so dramatically outperformed their recruiting?

Excellent question.

One interesting way to look at Navy and AFA would be: what do they do differently than Army? AFA has had a lot of success over the past 30-something years, and Navy has over the past 10, but Army has not, even though their constraints are similar as far as I know.

In regards to the military schools, I've been under the assumption for some time now that high school kids would just rather go into the Air Force or Navy, instead of the Army. It takes a special breed of person to go into an academy period, but the Air Force seems to be lending itself to a post-military career easier (as a commercial pilot for example). I don't know why but I also feel that the Army is harder academically than the Navy or Air Force. Just a guess there.

navy and air force have nukes and pilots while army has engineers. Notice that they aren't that different in their recruiting (as you would expect) but they are fairly different in their results. I DO think there is more 'cache' to air force and navy these days, but I can't substantiate it

All three generally ran the triple option recently... and I suspect that if we loooked at most of hat's years, he would have similarly performed fairly well relative to his stars

I think you run the spread and these 7+ cover guys who can also blitz these days to get better players because they want to play in those schemes... but one could probably make a good case for still seeking to do something somewhat unique. I think the teams who outperform their recruiting tend to be pretty imaginitive and not very traditional on wither side of the ball

(10-03-2014 01:07 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I think most of us would be happier being where Nevada or NIU is, or even Navy...

My thought, exactly.

For one thing, that puts us at about the level of performance we need to entertain any serious thoughts of attractiveness to a P-5 conference (it's in the range with the private "academic" P5 members other than Stanford--Northwestern, Duke, Vandy, even WF). There are P5 schools that are lower on the performance side, but all are pretty much universally regarded as underperforming programs that pull their conferences down.

For another, it would appear that we may be about maxed out on the recruiting side. We're top of the recruiting table among non-P5 "academic" schools (service academies, Tulane). We're about 20 spots below what seems to be the recruiting plateau for P5 "academics" other than Stanford, and that 20 spots is probably about the difference that P5 makes. My guess would be that under Bailiff we have moved from about the Army/Buffalo (maybe ULM) range to where we are now.

We've definitely gotten better players. Further progress depends on getting them to play better. And a P5 invite depends on that further progress.

As for methodology, I'm sure the recruiting data have some biases (for that matter, so do the performance rankings, although less so) but I don't really see any obvious outliers. I would suggest that the other variables proposed for consideration (attendance, coaches' salaries) would probably show closer correlation, but would be more results than causes of performance. To move up, you've got to find the diamond in the rough.

Bottom line: It's nice to be Stanford--or 'Bama.

(10-04-2014 04:43 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I would suggest that the other variables proposed for consideration (attendance, coaches' salaries) would probably show closer correlation, but would be more results than causes of performance.

As far as Rice is concerned, that's probably true. We're not going to draw better until we play better. And we're probably not going to pay much better until we draw better.

But I also think -- and I expect you agree with this -- we also aren't going to recruit much better until we play better and draw better. And I think that's an important point to understand.

(10-04-2014 01:27 PM)Gravy Owl Wrote:  

(10-04-2014 04:43 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I would suggest that the other variables proposed for consideration (attendance, coaches' salaries) would probably show closer correlation, but would be more results than causes of performance.

As far as Rice is concerned, that's probably true. We're not going to draw better until we play better. And we're probably not going to pay much better until we draw better.

But I also think -- and I expect you agree with this -- we also aren't going to recruit much better until we play better and draw better. And I think that's an important point to understand.

That's the point I was making. I think we've pushed as far as we can go with recruiting, unless and until we get invited to a P-5. We need to move up the graph now, because I don't think we are moving much further right until we move up a bunch.